‘Bath salts’ are growing drug problem

Who would have thought that Bath Salts will be called ‘growing drug problem’. Well that is exactly what is happening in America. The country has long talked about ‘drug abuse’ lets talk about ‘bath salt’ abuse now!

Well, technically bath salts are also drug. But Americans recently are buying bath salt not for bathing but for something else other then what is instructed in the label. They are using bath salts to get high!

An interesting story of Neil Brown who got high from the chemicals in bath salts, he took his skinning knife and slit his face and stomach repeatedly. Brown survived, but authorities say others haven’t been so lucky after snorting, injecting or smoking powders with such innocuous-sounding names as Ivory Wave, Red Dove and Vanilla Sky.

The effects of these chemicals can be more powerful methamphetamine! Poison control centers say the advertised bath salts with complex chemical names are an emerging menace in several U.S. states where authorities talk of banning their sale.

Sold under such names as Ivory Wave, Bliss, White Lightning and Hurricane Charlie, the chemicals can cause hallucinations, paranoia, rapid heart rates and suicidal thoughts, authorities say. The chemicals are in products sold legally at convenience stores and on the Internet as bath salts and even plant foods. However, they aren’t necessarily being used for the purposes on the label.

In Brown’s case, he said he had tried every drug from heroin to crack and was so shaken by terrifying hallucinations that he wrote one Mississippi paper urging people to stay away from the advertised bath salts.

“I couldn’t tell you why I did it,” Brown said, pointing to his scars. “The psychological effects are still there.”

While Brown survived, sheriff’s authorities in one Mississippi county say they believe one woman overdosed on the powders there. In southern Louisiana, the family of a 21-year-old man says he cut his throat and ended his life with a gunshot. Authorities are investigating whether a man charged with capital murder in the December death of a Tippah County, Miss., sheriff’s deputy was under the influence of the bath salts.

Dr. Richard Sanders, a general practitioner working in Covington, La., said his son, Dickie, snorted some of the chemicals and endured three days of intermittent delirium. Dickie Sanders missed major arteries when he cut his throat. As he continued to have visions, his physician father tried to calm him. But the elder Sanders said that as he slept, his son went into another room and shot himself.

“If you could see the contortions on his face. It just made him crazy,” said Sanders. He added that the coroner’s office confirmed the chemicals were detected in his son’s blood and urine.

Sanders warns the substances are far more dangerous than some of their brand names imply.

“I think everybody is taking this extremely lightly. As much as we outlawed it in Louisiana, all these kids cross over to Mississippi and buy whatever they want,” he said.